Soccer player deals with family tragedy, personal adversity

Sarah Johnson first began to play soccer at the age of four, wanting to follow in the footsteps of her older brother Ryan Johnson. Since then her mother Linda Johnson was always there to support her.

Game after game Linda’s presence was felt by her daughter, who played all throughout her life, continuing to play while at Drauden Point Middle School, Plainfield South High School and starting in 2010 at St. Joseph’s College in Indiana.

But entering her senior year of college, Sarah no longer had that familiar face cheering her on anymore.

On March 14, 2013, two days before her 48th birthday, Linda passed away after battling cancer since the late 2000s.

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During her sophomore year at Plainfield South, Sarah’s mother was first diagnosed with breast cancer. Not only was Linda going through this terrible battle with cancer, her family by her side, but also the following year Sarah had her own health scare to deal with.

Entering her junior year of high school, Sarah played for the Bolingbrook Raiders, which is a travel soccer team.

In the middle of an August game for the Raiders, Sarah went down, feeling pain in her leg. It took about three months later until she found out that it was a torn ACL, but the day she suffered the injury her coach thought it wasn’t a big deal.

“I remember when I first went down my coach came over and he said, ‘Oh, it’s just a muscle strain. Get off the field, jog it off,’” she said.

Not knowing she had torn a ligament in her knee, Sarah listened to her coach, walked off the field for a bit and then returned and finished playing the rest of the game.

Not only did she finish that game, she went on to play in several tournaments throughout the fall, as well.

“They continued to tell me it was a muscle strain,” Sarah said. “It was too swollen and they couldn’t see it on the MRI. I was walking on it fine.”

All was fine, but she did have an assist from some Icy-Hot and Bengay.

“A lot of Ibuprofen, too,” she said. “Ibuprofen and Bengay was my regiment before every game.”

Her knee would constantly swell, which forced her to use a knee brace, but that protection wasn’t enough to secure Sarah for long.

She doesn’t remember if it was in late October or early November of 2008, but after taking a shot on-goal and then landing, her knee, which would get swollen, but was still able to move on it, was not cooperating with the forward anymore.

Adding to her torn ACL was a torn meniscus in her knee. Surgery soon followed, bringing six months away from the sport she loves.

For the first time in her life she could not just pick up a soccer ball and kick it around, let alone get back on the field, where she missed all but of a couple of games during her junior year at Plainfield South. The time off, spent rehabbing after surgery did bring one positive, as Sarah was able to get a different perspective of the game, helping her mature as a player.

“That was an extreme challenge for me, you know, you never know how much you love the game until you’re taken out of it,” she said.

Sarah has always been a leader on the field, but after missing half a year, she became a stronger one off of it, forced to by the injury.

“Not being able to have that presence on the field and not being able to show yourself that you’re worthy of being a leader means that you have to find leadership in a completely different role,” Sarah said. “I feel like that’s helped me extremely in college among other things.”

Although she was frustrated, missing most of her junior season, which led to fewer colleges recruiting her, Sarah is somewhat grateful she went through the experience.

“As much as it sucked I did learn things from it,” she said. “I’m glad it happened, but at the same time not, but I feel like it made me a better player for it.”

During this time, Linda’s breast cancer was put into remission and despite missing out on most of her junior soccer season, Sarah was still being sought after by different universities.

There was one coach in particular who stuck around and continued recruiting Sarah, despite not being able to show off her skill while rehabbing her knee.

                                            ***

While a sophomore in high school, Sarah first began to be recruited and when the Cougars played a game against Naperville, L. Scott House, then the women’s soccer coach at St. Joseph’s, was in attendance. But he wasn’t there looking at any of Plainfield South’s players. By the end of the day he would be interested in two – one of them being Sarah.

“He sent a letter to our coach about me and Maddy Haski, saying that he was interested in us and to check out the school,” Sarah said. “The next year was when I tore my ACL and he was one of the few that actually stayed interested from the higher schools.”

She does feel that if she did have the opportunity to play during her junior year that more schools would have perused her, but ultimately instead of getting ready for soccer season, she had surgery three days before Thanksgiving.

The surgery was a breeze compared to what followed in the ensuing months.

“If I had to go through a torn ACL again the surgery was the easy part – I would go through that in a second,” she said. “The rehab was the pain in the butt.”

Sarah remembers her first therapy session ending in tears. While sitting on a table, Sarah’s rehab therapist bent her knee, causing more pain than what she could handle, but it was necessary.

“They bend your knee and they say, you’re at this degree and we need you to get to here, so they actually get on a table, force your leg to get past where you can bend it and I cried the first time because I was in so much pain,” Sarah said.

Imagine having a sprain or a jammed finger and then trying to bend it, but it feels like if it’s bent any more something is going to pop. That’s what Sarah’s pain felt like during her rehab.

“You physically cannot make it go any farther, but they push it back there and basically tear up any scar tissue you might have,” she said. “It’s an extremely painful process.”

The rehab was rough to say the least, but at least Thanksgiving wasn’t so bad after having surgery.

“It was nice because I got to recover, sitting on the couch and I kind of got food delivered to me,” she said with a laugh.

After a grueling rehab process, she returned to end her junior season still not at 100 percent.

Sarah admits to overcompensating on the field and also being scared at first of hard tackles on her.

After six months of getting healthy enough to play again, Sarah made her first appearance on the field, as Plainfield South played against Joliet Township.

For one of the girls on Joliet’s team, the game ended early.

“I gave a girl a concussion because we were running full force and I was trying to protect my knees, so I went harder at her than she came at me,” she said.

That girl happened to be Abby Batis, who was a teammate of Sarah’s in their travel soccer team.

“I saw her later and I said, ‘I’m so sorry,’” Sarah said.

Her junior year ended and after graduating in 2010 from Plainfield South, Sarah was headed to St. Joseph’s.

Unfortunately, Sarah’s freshman year of college was not all that she had hoped for.

                                            ***

During her daughter’s freshman year at St. Joseph’s, Linda was re-diagnosed with breast cancer.

Meanwhile, Sarah stepped into a tension-filled locker room.

“I walked into a team that resented their coach,” she said.

A great recruiter, but not tactically gifted is how Sarah describes House, who she said looked up drills on the Internet as his main way of coaching.

“When our team didn’t do (a drill) successfully, because he didn’t understand the drill himself, he would mad and just make us run,” she said. “He wasn’t extremely knowledgeable about the game. He was a good recruiter, but he wasn’t a good coach.”

Sarah was not the only one fed up with House, as halfway through the season, she along with the rest of the team pleaded with St. Joseph’s athletic director to hire a new coach.

House was fired shortly after.

Individually, Sarah made all 17 starts as a freshman, as her two goals were both game-winners. She also nabbed league honors, as she was named Academic All-Great Lakes Valley Conference.

Her sophomore season came with a new coach – Emily Holbrook.

No one, well maybe one or two, but most of the players on the team absolutely despised Holbrook, Sarah said.

It seemed like a joke the day she was hired because as candidates went through the interviewing process the team was allowed to sit in and see what its future coach would be like. Out of the three coaches that the team observed, Holbrook was the one candidate the Pumas did not want to be hired.

On January 6, 2011, Holbrook became the 10th women’s soccer coach in program history at St. Joseph’s.

The initial experience wasn’t bad, Sarah said. Holbrook worked the team hard, focusing on endurance and stamina. Sarah said her new coach did get her into great shape, as she experienced the most conditioning of her life leading up to her second season at St. Joseph’s.

Despite there being an initial hesitance in accepting a new coach, Sarah was optimistic that the strict coach would lead the team to success.

“You want to say, ‘this is what we need. We need someone who’s going to come in and make us work hard and even if we hate her for doing it, we’re going to be better in the long run,’ that’s what I thought it was going to be,” Sarah said.

She was positive heading into the summer, having allusions that Holbrook’s coaching style would work like it did for Herb Brooks and the 1980 United States Olympic Hockey Team.

Sarah and the rest of her team quickly found out the arrival of Holbrook was no miracle.

“She was having major issues with the athletic trainers because she was pushing us past what was healthy,” Sarah said.

Players began to be injured during the preseason and eventually the team was reduced to having only two players available off the bench.

One time, Sarah remembers Holbrook having the team do a two-mile heart-rate run, which is essentially running while having your heart rate in your target zone. It wasn’t meant to be strenuous, at least that’s what the team thought.

After everyone finished in about 17 minutes Holbrook said she wanted the players to do it again because it wasn’t fast enough.

The team did without any grunts or moans and in about 16 minutes the Pumas finished, or so they thought.

Holbrook instructed her team to run another mile, demanding every player to run it in less than 7:30 minutes. The team did, exhausted, only one player ran it in exactly 7:30 minutes, while the rest of the women trickled in behind.

“By then I ran five miles and I said, ‘OK I need some water,’” Sarah said. “She tells us, ‘don’t drink too much that’s only the first half. Everyone get on the end line.’”

They sprinted 1.5 more miles.

It wasn’t only the physical strain that she put on the team that bothered Sarah and her teammates. Holbrook was manipulative, too, Sarah said.

On senior day during the 2011 season, Holbrook broke tradition, as she decided not to start all of the seniors, which had become accustomed in prior years. Seniors started even if it was just a minute or two, it was tradition, Sarah said.

A fellow senior stood up to Holbrook and said, ‘I’m not stepping onto the field if she’s not on the field with me,’” Sarah said.

Holbrook reluctantly gave in.

“She hated the fact that she was cornered and ‘blackmailed’ is what she said into doing something she didn’t want to do,” Sarah said. “I know from that point on the player who stood up for her teammate didn’t play a game for the rest of the season.”

Again, the team only had two available players off the bench.

Later during the year a player’s calf was cramping up during a game and needed to be taken out. Holbrook had already used a substitute and had one player left – the same player who she said ‘blackmailed’ her on senior day.

“She looked back at the bench with the girl sitting there and said, ‘we don’t have any subs left. You have to suck it up,’” Sarah said. “She was so determined not to let her play ever again.”

The season ended with St. Joseph’s finishing with two wins, which Sarah said could be attributed to the team being burnt out midway through the season. Also, only having two substitutes did not help either.

Holbrook stuck around for another year and during that time she gave her team something to bond over, and also giving Sarah a chance to be a leader, being the team captain.

“A lot of people will turn negative when they hear a negative comment,” she said. “So, as much as you want to say this sucks, and I’m not doing this, you kind of have to be that positive rock for everyone else to feed off of.”

Sarah finished her third year of school at St. Joseph’s, but during that time, dealing with Holbrook was the least of her concerns.

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Linda had been going through chemotherapy since she was re-diagnosed with breast cancer a couple of years earlier, when Sarah first began college.

By the winter of 2012, Linda had enough of it and thought there had to be another way to cure her cancer.

“She was fed up with chemo at the time and she was trying to detoxify her body,” Sarah said. “She was convinced there was a natural way to cure cancer.”

Linda started her own treatment, juicing every two hours, eating specific things, continuing to stick with her regiment.

But the cancer did not go away and in January, doctors found brain tumors.

Sarah stayed at home for three months, taking care of her mother. But she wasn’t alone as one special friend joined her as much as she could.

Krystin Haas played three years with Sarah at St. Joseph’s, also being roommates during that time.

When Sarah did not return for the spring semester in 2013, as she stayed, caring for her mother at home, Haas made the nearly two-hour drive from Rensselaer, Ind., to Plainfield every weekend to be alongside Sarah and Linda.

“She would put in the miles every weekend to be with me and that’s something that’s hard to ask someone you’ve only known for two years at the time, but she was there for me every step of the way,” Sarah said.

Benjamin Gomes, Sarah’s boyfriend was also there supporting Sarah, visiting her as much as he could.

Linda passed away on a Thursday, cancer taking her life and leaving a son, a daughter and a husband grieving.

Sarah still had one year left until she graduated St. Joseph’s and one last season of soccer.

“I think it made it a little bit harder to find motivation again, but you do what you can,” Sarah said.

But she had a team behind her that was there to support her from the terrible tragedy.

“Having a team that you’re close with helped me a lot,” Sarah said. “Having that second family helped me a lot going through the difficult time. They made it that much easier for me to go back to school and not have a problem.”

Once her soccer season began again in 2013, it became somewhat easier to not think about her mom passing away.

“I tended not to think about it,” she said. “Soccer can be an extremely mental game and I don’t want to be thinking about these thoughts and not be thinking about the game. Being on a team and having school work, it helped at the time because you have a distraction.”

                                     ***

During the Pumas’ first home game of the 2013 season, Sarah was surprised on the field, as teammates adorned a sweatband on their wrists with the initials L.J.J., a tribute to Linda.

Sarah appreciated all the support she received, but her first game wasn’t so easy to get through.

“The first one was the hardest because she wasn’t there, but after that it became normality and easier to deal with,” she said.

In a practice game Sarah scored a couple of goals, which brought out some emotions from her team.

“A couple of my close friends were on the field and they were like, ‘I almost cried when you scored that goal,’” she said.

Starting from that game, every goal she scored, Sarah would bring her index and middle fingers up to her lips, give them a kiss and point to the sky.

Linda may not have been there in person, cheering on her daughter, but she remained present for Sarah.

“It was hard not to have her on the sideline, but you know she’s there,” Sarah said.

Aldo Soto can be reached at asoto3128@gmail.com.